Centre payout to acquire land for NHs rises 4.5 times in 4 years

Infra News - Published on Mon, 17 Dec 2018

TOI reported that government payout for acquiring a hectare of land for building and expansion of National Highways has increased four-and-a-half times in the past 4 years and more than half of NHAI’s total expenditure between 2014 and 2018 has been on accounts of procuring land parcels. The spike in expenses has been due to the implementation of the land acquisition law enacted during UPA-II. NHAI started compliance of the law from January 1, 2015.

A manual of guidelines for land acquisition prepared by road transport and highways secretary Mr YS Malik said that “As per the information gathered from NHAI, the average cost of land acquisition was about INR 80 lakh per hectare before January 1, 2015, which has now gone up to about INR 3.6 crore per hectare. Out of a total expenditure of INR 1,52,000 crore during the period of last four years (April 2014 to March 2018), NHAI has spent INR 81,000 crore on land acquisition as against an expenditure of about INR 41,000 crore on civil works.”